Voltaire must be spinning in his grave. Just down the Parisian hill from where the Enlightenment’s greatest satirist is interred, a noisy scrum of intolerance is drawing any public figure with an image to market, clamoring to deliver a sound bite before the row dies down and the cameras move on.

The contest pits the Grand Mosque of Paris and the Union of Islamic Organizations of France against the editors of the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, in a lawsuit citing anti-racism laws over the magazine’s February 2006 publication of those Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that caused a global uproar. The complaint describes the decision to reprint the drawings as “born of a simplistic Islamophobia and purely commercial interests”; as having “insulted people on the basis of religion”; and as a “provocation aimed against the Islamic community.”

The editors of Charlie Hebdo and their incensed backers depict the trial as an assault on free speech by religious intolerance. A paper that thrives on controversy and insult, Charlie Hebdo argues the drawings were published both to support the Danish editors who drew the ire of Muslims around the world, and to make the point that a fully equal and integrated Islam in secular European societies can’t expect to enjoy a deference not accorded to Christianity or Judaism. “The Pope is satirized, the Church is satirized, Christians are satirized and so are Jews — all in a well-established tradition of commentary and humor,” declared Reporters Without Borders general secretary Robert M�nard outside of the court as it opened Wednesday. “Muslims have to get used to the same treatment — and in reality, most have.”

PARIS: The French Socialist party threw out one of its leading members on Saturday for having said there were too many black players in the national soccer team, adding to the woes of its presidential candidate Segolene Royal.

Georges Freche, president of the Languedoc-Roussillon region in the south and a founding member of the party, is a supporter of Royal. She has backed his expulsion from the party but it comes at a bad time for her as she faces criticism for a series of gaffes on foreign policy and domestic issues.

The decision was made at a meeting of members of a commission set up to resolve internal party disputes.

“If he had not said what he said, we would all. . . be in a much more agreeable situation,” said Patrick Mennucci, deputy director of Royal’s campaign.

“The situation is very unpleasant and the Socialist Party cannot continue to have someone who makes comments of this sort in its ranks.”

In November, Freches was reported complaining at a local political meeting that nine out of the eleven members of the national soccer team were black.

“I am ashamed for this country. Soon there will be eleven blacks,” the Midi libre newspaper quoted him as saying.

Berlin – German justice minister Brigitte Zypries (SPD) says that she will use the country’s six-month presidency of the European Union to make divorce between EU nationals easier and to stiffen punishment for racially motivated crimes, Der Tagesspiegel reports.

Harmonizing family law continent-wide is one of the stated goals of Germany’s presidency, Zypries told reporters Monday.

The marriage proposals are meant to make dissolving bi-national bindings less expensive and opaque.

Zypries says that prior to marrying, couples should be able to set out in a contract which country’s laws will reign in a divorce court. This will mean that, for example, an Irishman living in Amsterdam with a German man or woman could divorce in a Dutch court which would create a settlement in accordance with German marriage laws (or, if so chosen, with Irish marriage laws). Such a thing is impossible now, a fact that can make ending bi-national marriages an expensive and cumbersome proposition. Zypries plans to meet other EU countries’ justice ministers in Dresden next week to hammer out the details.

The racism proposals would stiffen crimes against foreigners and people of color, and make denying the Holocaust a crime in all EU countries (it is currently only a crime in Switzerland and in some EU countries – Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia).

FRANCE’S highest administrative court has confirmed a police decision banning an organisation with far-right links from offering pork soup to the homeless.

Police had banned the soup kitchen last month, arguing the handouts discriminated against Jews and Muslims who do not eat pork on religious grounds. But the ban was overturned by an administrative court earlier this week.

The French Interior Ministry had appealed against that court ruling to the Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court.

Some 72 airport staff, most of them Muslims, have been stripped of their security clearance at France’s main airport, Charles de Gaulle in Paris. They pose a risk because of alleged links to groups with “potentially terrorist aims”, officials say. The staff, who include baggage handlers, are said to have visited Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some of them are suing the authorities, claiming they are being discriminated against because of their religion. The interior ministry last year ordered a security review of airport staff.

“Seventy-two employees had their badges withdrawn [because] they are linked to fundamentalist movements with potentially terrorist aims,” Jacques Lebrot, the deputy prefect in charge of the airport, told the AFP news agency.

The “great majority” were linked to an “Islamist movement”, he said. Badges were also taken away from “just under a dozen” people suspected of links to Sri Lankan Tamil Tiger rebels as well as from one Sikh worker.

“Killing innocent civilians is NOT an act of self-defense. Destroying a sovereign nation is NOT a measured response.”

Lebanese civilians have been under the constant attack of the state of Israel for several days. The State of Israel, in disregard to international law and the Geneva Convention, is launching a maritime and air siege targeting the entire population of the country. Innocent civilians are being collectively punished in Lebanon by the state of Israel in deliberate acts of terrorism as described in Article 33 of the Geneva Convention.

The Lebanese people feel left out by the world that is turning a blind eye on the savagery of the Israeli state. Israel does not seem to be capable of approaching any problem outside the realm of the military power bestowed on it by the government of the United States of America and other western governments.

The accidental death of a gendarme (French policeman) on the Caribbean island of Saint-Martin has plunged France into a new spasm of race-related angst after his widow claimed that youths refused to help after he was hit by a speeding motorcycle and later gloated at the death of a white.

With feelings already running high after the brutal murder in Paris of the young Jewish man Ilan Halimi, the events surrounding the death of 31 year-old Raphael Clin on February 12 have stoked fears of a festering anti-white hatred among the country’s black and Arab populations.